Seminars and events organised by the Anthropology of Children Working Group
Upcoming seminars
- for past seminars, see below.
The next seminar of the Anthropology of Children Working Group will be held on:
Monday 13 February 2012, 14.00-15.30
Venue: VU University Amsterdam, Metropolitan Building: Room Z-009
The function of Student Pidgin in Ghana
Lecture by Laura Rupp (Faculty of Arts, VU University Amsterdam) followed by discussion.
In Ghana, university students speak a variety of English that has been termed Student Pidgin (especially male students). This variety exists next to other English varieties like standard (Ghanaian) English and Pidgin English. Different explanations have been put forward to explain the occurrence of Pidgin English, such as deviant “boyish” behavior and removing the pressure of speaking grammatically correct Standard English. From research that Laura Rupp conducted in September 2011 it seems that students use Student Pidgin as a “tussentaal”: that is, a variety that on the one hand clearly identifies them as educated persons while at the same time permitting them to communicate with people who cannot speak Standard English (relatives and friends at home). The researcher used a written survey and she would like to discuss with the participants of the Seminar other methodologies that could give her more insight into the function of Student Pidgin.
Download the poster for this seminar.
Seminars have been scheduled on the following dates in 2012.
- 12 March, 14.00-15.30
- 12 April, 10.30-12.00
- 14 May, 14.00-15.30
- 18 June, 10.30-12.00
Past seminars of the Anthropology of Children Working Group
16 January 2012
Young People and Social Change: Illuminating the Connections between Children/Youth Studies and Development Studies
Discussion introduced by Roy Huijsmans (Institute of Social Studies, The Hague)
To a large degree, children & youth studies and development studies constitute two separate communities of scholars with their own bodies of literature. This seminar is dedicated to a discussion on how both fields of study could find a meaningful collaboration and joint inspiration. Over the past decades the study of children and youth has attracted considerable attention across the social sciences. These researchers share a common premise in 1) conceptualising children and young people as social actors, and 2) in assessing childhood and youth as social constructs. Whilst young people have also attracted some scholarly attention in the field of development studies, it has remained a largely adult-centred domain despite the demographic realities in developing countries. On the other hand, development studies have also much to offer to children and youth studies. Development studies can draw on a significant amount of accumulated knowledge and experience on themes like agency, participation, empowerment, human rights, inequality, poverty, discourse and governmentality, themes which are currently attracting an increasing amount of critical attention in children and youth studies.
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13 December 2011
Children and youth in development work
Discussion led by Janneke Juffermans
During this seminar, the roles and perceptions of children and youth in international development were discussed. The session was chaired by Janneke Juffermans, a freelance journalist and editor of the Vice Versa magazine, and aimed to support her preparations for a special issue of Vice Versa on this topic. Vice Versa reaches 3000 readers in the development sector and explores current debates in de the sector of development cooperation.
15 November 2011
"Minimising Differences - Celebrating Diversity" in Danish Schools
Lecture by Ditte Strunge Sass, Brunel University, London, followed by discussion.
Ditte Sass investigates the Danish Folkeskole (The Danish ground school, age 6-16) as a space in which the child is simultaneously being a welfare citizen, as they consume a welfare good, i.e. education – and becoming a welfare citizen, as they learn appropriate ways of being a citizen in the welfare state of Denmark. More specifically this talk is about the notion of minimising differences (often perceived in socio-economic terms) and simultaneously celebrating diversity (often perceived in terms of culture). Ditte Sass will discuss how the streamlined, egalitarian school system will, in the aid of creating equal opportunities, identify characteristics, which are "not equal" and hence “right” and “wrong” ways of being diverse. Subsequently the school sometimes end up emphasising the very differences it set out to eradicate.
Please download the poster of this seminar.
10 October 2011
North African children's play and toy cultures: Recent research
Presentation by Jean-Pierre Rossie, Musée de Jouet de Moirans-en-Montagne, France, followed by discussion.
Two themes in the research of Jean-Pierre Rossie were discussed in this seminar: (1) Moroccan children’s play and toys inspired by TV programs. This concerns an interdisciplinary study (socio-cultural anthropology and communication sciences). The presenter particularly focused on the methodological and ethical aspects of the research. (2) In addition. Rossie will give a presentation on his project “research on children's play and toys in non-western or non-industrial communities and their contribution to anthropology”.
Please download the poster of this seminar
20 September 2011
The Role of Children in the French Protection System
Presentation by staff and students of Le Collège Coopératif Rhône-Alpes, followed by discussion.
Staff and students of Le Collège Coopératif Rhône-Alpes (an educational center training social workers) presented their perspectives on the French system of child protection and the position of children in it. The seminar provided a platform of exchange about the value of the anthropology of children for applied work in children’s social care.
Please download the poster of this seminar
15 April 2011
‘She treats me like I’m her own child’: A sociocultural contextualization of Ghanaian left behind children’s emotional experiences of living in a transnational family
Lecture by Miranda Poeze, PhD candidate, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, University of Maastricht, followed by discussion.
Over the past decades researchers have raised concerns over the negative impacts that parental migration has on the emotional well-being of children left behind in the home country. Most of these studies depart from a Western middle class idea of the family, which emphasizes the nuclear family and physical proximity between the parent and the child. This study moves beyond the universal and ethnocentric conceptualization of caregiving and shows that emotional experiences of Ghanaian left behind children need to be socioculturally contextualized in order to understand the dynamics leading to both negative as well as positive emotions.
Miranda Poeze is a PhD Candidate at the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands, researching Ghanaian transnational parent-child relationships and the impact of host country migration policies. She is part of the Transnational Child Raising Arrangement (TRCA) project in which Ghanaian transnational families are studied by applying mixed-methods in transnational field sites.
Please download the poster of this seminar
15 March 2011
Childrens Drawings and Indigenous Cultures: How Mebengokre-Xikrin children from Brazil picture their culture
Lecture by Clarice Cohn, Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos, Brazil, followed by discussion.
The Indigenization of Culture is a central topic in Anthropology. In Brazil, many Indigenous peoples are creating their own theories and translations of "culture". Children also have their perspectives on Indigenous cultures and identities. Working with Mebengokre-Xikrin children's drawings, Dr Cohn shows how they are able to picture their culture for non-Indigenous persons in school tasks, demonstrating a clear understanding of what is supposed to be "indigenous", as compared to the drawings they make for themselves, in which they draw everything that interests them be it ‘Indigenous’ or not.
Please download the poster of this seminar
15 February 2011
Can I still become a Doctor?Matching Dutch Educational Realities with Life Dreams of ‘African Diaspora’ Children in Amsterdam Zuidoost
Lecture by Sjoukje Wartena, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Psychology and Education, Department Theory and Research in Education (VU University Amsterdam), followed by discussion.
Children in Amsterdam Zuidoost live in a spatial and ethnically segregated ‘African Diaspora’ district, with about 130 African International Churches and schools with up to hundred percent children with a migrant background. Many children are sent to the lowest -high school- educational levels and school drop-out figures are high. Children (11-13) from three primary schools participate in researching their transition to secondary education. Sjoukje Wartena will discuss her research into the challenges and opportunities of the Dutch educational system in relation to the realities of transnational families and childhood. She will also highlight some of the methodological issues faced when looking ‘through the children’s eyes’ at this field.
Please download the poster of this seminar
17 January 2011
Challenges in Research with Children Affected by HIV/AIDS
Lecture by Drs. Mienke van der Brug, PhD, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology (VU University Amsterdam) followed by discussion.
Many children in Namibia are affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. They have lost one or both parents to AIDS and an increasing group of children is HIV positive. The caregivers of these
children are often reticent to speak with them about the death of parents, HIV/AIDS, anddisclosure of the child’s HIV positive status. Mienke van der Brug discussed her research with children on grief, bereavement and well-being in this context, and gave insight into her methodology envisaged during her upcoming PhD fieldwork in northern Namibia.
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30 September-1 October 2010
International Conference: 'The doors of perception: Viewing anthropology through the eyes of children'
The Anthropology of Children Working Group organised a two-day international conference during which state-of-the-art child-oriented research was presented and discussed. See the conference website for more details.
21 May 2010
Children's Rights
Lecture by Dr. Jacobijn Olthoff and Azza Abdelmoneium (Master's programme in Children's Rights, University of Amsterdam) followed by discussion.
Children’s right gained a lot of recognition and attention in the past 20 years in academic and non-academic fields. Dr. Jacobijn Olthoff and Dr. Azza Abdelmoneium explained research from a child right perspective and elaborate on its implications and the overlaps with research approaches in other academic fields in science. Taking Sudan as a case study, the discussion focused on the challenges of research in developing countries.
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15 April 2010
The Contours of Belonging: Legality, Race, Class and Generation in the US
Lecture by Dr. Irene Bloemraad (University of California, Berkeley)
, followed by discussion.
Of the more than 38 million foreign-born residents of the United States, roughly a third are naturalized US citizens, a third are legal permanent residents and a third are undocumented migrants without legal papers. The children of these people, if born in the United States, are automatically US citizens. Traditional accounts of political socialization expect that these children will learn about politics and civic engagement from their parents. But what happens when parents are immigrants, especially when their legal status prevents direct participation in the formal political system? Do children become alienated and detached from the political and larger community, or do they compensate for their parents’ lack of voice by increasing attachment and engagement? This talk presented some early findings from over 200 interviews with teenage Americans and their Mexican, Vietnamese or Chinese-origin parents living in the San Francisco Bay area. It argued that even in the United States, we can distinguish “ethnic” and “civic” notions of membership linked to being “American” or being a US citizen. Legal institutions carry important cultural implications for feelings of belonging. Group illegality influenced notions of membership, even if individuals do not confront illegality personally, while birthplace citizenship offers an opening to challenge notions of ‘being American’ predicated on race and economic privilege.
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15 March 2010
Medical Checks for Children: Searching for improvements in a universal model for children's health care
Presentation by Judith van den Hoven, AIOS General Practice & Ilse Westerbeek, Medical Checks for Children, followed by discussion.
MCC offers general medical healthcare to children in all age categories, that is from 0-18 years of age. However, preventative programs are mainly focused on children under 5 years (because of the poor survival rate under 5 years) and school children. MCC's mission is the improvement of the healthcare of underprivileged children in difficult circumstances by provision of diagnosis and treatment. Together with local contacts, MCC supplies small-scale and individual help (cure and prevention). MCC is not disease-specific orientated. MCC has a generalized approach to the total health care of the child. Through its activities MCC attempts to improve the life expectancy of underprivileged children.
Areas of help are:
• Acute assistance (5-10% of MCC’s work load).
• Prevention of disease: early detection and treatment of, for example: worm infections, malnutrition and stunted growth
• Promotion of health by giving advice on the value of sport, good nutrition, lifestyle and child rearing
• Protection of good health by giving advice on nutrition and good hygiene
Download the poster of this seminar
Download the PPT presentation by MCC
15 February 2010
Rethinking Program Design and Evaluation: An Education NGO’s Interest in the Anthropology of Childhood
Presentation by Simon Bailey (research manager with Aflatoun, Child Social & Financial Education), followed by discussion.
Current children’s program planning and evaluation methodologies follow a formal logic that does not always cohere with children’s life experience. Even qualitative tools, which are meant to solicit in-depth responses, are now designed to solicit structured, usable responses from children quickly. Anthropological investigations have the potential to improve program design by taking into account the social reality in which programs are often implemented, as well as by providing richer research about how programs actually relate to what children know and how they behave.
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15 January 2010
Developing child-oriented research methods
Presentation by Mienke van der Brug and Erik van Ommering
Conducting research with children requires a reconsideration of common, adult-centred means of data collection. Margaret Mead, already in the 1920s, gathered 32.000 'spontaneous drawings' of Manus children. Drawing has subsequently evolved into a prime methodological instrument aimed at elucidating children's perspectives. The process of drawing is believed to underline children's agency and to stimulate their ownership of the research process. However, it is still undefined how data from drawings ought to be processed, how elicitation based on drawings could best be designed and how they actually contribute to theoretical knowledge on children's lives. This seminar addressed these quandaries. During the discussion challenges were confronted and opportunities explored of child-oriented research methods, in order to set out an agenda for further development in this field.
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10 December 2009
The Global Classroom: Introducing new arrivals, refugees, and travellers children to school settings in the United Kingdom
Lecture and workshop by Cilel Smith (Institute of Education, University of London)
Cilel Smith conducted research on the piloting and implementation of board games in UK primary schools. These games have been designed as a welcome and inclusion programme for new arrivals, refugees, and travellers children. Based on her research, she has set up a Global Classroom in which teachers are trained to use the game. Cilel Smith gave a lecture on the Global Classroom project and the contributions it made for school pupils and staff, which is followed by a demonstration.
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Download a report on this seminar
27 November 2009
“It’s bedtime” in the World’s Urban Middle-Classes: Children, Families, and Sleep
Guest lecture by Prof. Eyal Ben-Ari (Hebrew University, Jerusalem), followed by discussion.
In the urban middle-class of the Euro-American societies we find a particular pre-sleep bedtime “ritual” that is (ideally) characterized by certain features: it usually takes place within the nuclear family, is centered on the private space of a bedroom, and includes a patterned set of activities centered on an evening meal, bathing, special clothing and toys, stories and lullabies, tucking or coddling the child, and then leaving the child alone in its room. In this lecture Prof. Ben-Ari examines this taken-for-granted “ritual” from three interrelated perspectives: an examination of how it is actually put into practice in Euro-American societies, a comparative investigation of the historical and cross-cultural differences in putting children to sleep, and an exploration of the manner and extent by which the scenario has been globalized.
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18 November 2009
‘Setting the agenda for the future: final episode’
Seminar to finalise the Working Group’s mission statement and discuss the agenda, fund raising, and PR activities (including website and mailing list)
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12 October 2009
‘Setting the agenda for the future’
Seminar included the presentation of a landscaping study by Anne Schouten on the anthropology of children. The draft mission statement was discussed, as well as the agenda, thematic foci of the seminars, and issues of logistics
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16 September 2009
Cultural Models of Teaching and Learning
Lecture by Prof. David Lancy (Utah State University), followed by discussion.
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Download the PowerPoint presentation by Prof. David Lancy
10 June 2009
Inaugural meeting of the Anthropology of Children Working Group
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